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Police Say Mac Tech Installed Spyware To Photo Women
CWmike writes "He was hired to fix their computers, but police say that Trevor Harwell instead installed spyware software that took candid photos of his clients in various states of undress. Harwell had been a Macintosh specialist with a Los Angeles-area home computer repair company called Rezitech. That's how he allegedly had the opportunity to install the spy software, called Camcapture, on computers. While working on repair assignments, the 20-year-old technician secretly set up a complex system that could notify him whenever it was ready to snap a shot using the computer's webcam, according to Sergeant Andrew Goodrich, a spokesman with the Fullerton Police Department in California. 'It would let his server know that the victim's machine was on. The server would then notify his smartphone... and then the images were recorded on his home computer,' he said. Police say they've found thousands of images on Harwell's computers and have identified dozens of victims, all of them women in Los Angeles and Orange County. Harwell was arrested Wednesday by Fullerton police." But was he a good repairman?
This guy was a rogue and clearly not following Apple policy. Apple states explicitly in their policy manual that spying on customers in any way--through their webcam, microphone, user accounts, etc.--is strictly prohibited for all Apple employees except Steve Jobs.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Apparently he is qualified to work for one of the school boards in Pennsylvania
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Now that is creative. Had to be some mighty dumb women who fell for that.
I don't know if he was a good repairman, but he sure is a tool. Fixed himself but good.
Don't these people know, that when the little green LED is on next to the camera there is something going on with the camera?
I do not know if there is any spyware that can disable that, but in my experience: whatever touches the camera, the led comes on.
I am surprised about all these secretly filmed students, thieves, women who have 1000s of pictures taken of them and never figured that GREEN LIGHT=CAMERA ON.....
Really, is there any software that can use the MAC cameras without turning the light on ?
Um... here you... go?
He wouldn't have been arrested if he just registered himself as a school first. Then it's just a lawsuit.
This guy seriously needs to get laid. Seriously.
I have been telling my clients for years as more and more laptops have gotten built in cameras or more clients have webcams hooked up to their desktops -> put a piece of tape or a post-it note over the lens when not in use. I may be paranoid but it definitely keeps that camera from doing that.
Story is obviously a fake.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Um... here you... go?
Win.
I'm sorry to say that I don't get the creepy factor here. The number one fantasy of guys (that ALL straight guys have had) is to be invisible in a women's locker room. This is basically someone trying to achieve that fantasy through technology. Yes, it was wrong. But still, the amount of harm done here just isn't so great IMO. Sorry. As long has he wasn't spreading the photos around with names and information, blackmailing the participants, etc, then it's just some guy getting a thrill trying to peak at naked women. It's been happening as long as women have been wearing clothes. So how the hell is that creepy?
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all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Fat girls need love too :p
On a semi-serious note what's up with attractive equaling super skinny? I like my women to actually look like women and not kids.
It has nothing to do with liking to see naked chicks. Sure, I like to see naked chicks too. I don't go install spyware on people's computers for that.
Similarly we all like money, but most of us don't go empty someone's bank account with a keylogger or phishing site. And most of us like sex, but we don't give someone some *ahem* surprise sex. And most of us would like something bad to happen to that guy who was the school bully or to some cruel ex or idiot boss or whatever, but we don't go set their house on fire. Etc.
Reducing it to liking or wanting something is ridiculously simplistic. The question isn't what he wanted, but how he went about that.
And frankly, few things piss me off than the kind of person who's only kept from being a bully or a crook by not having the balls to do it IRL, but who turns into a bully or a crook as soon as there's a couple of routers between him and the victim. I don't have much respect for the former category to start with, but the kind who thinks he's so L33T for hiding behind the screen to do it, ranks even lower for me.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
He's a grocer. He's allowed to have those extra apostrophe's.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Yeah, but that's exactly the point. You can just search google and get more than enough photos of chicks fitting any body ideal or fantasy one may have. "Amateur", skinny, fat, big boobs, small boobs, redhead, blonde, brunette, cheerleaders, goths, whatever you can imagine really.
So exactly what makes a certain category of idiot prefer to be a crook or a bully to get the same?
I mean, it's like having a public drinking fountain on one side of a road, and seeing someone shoplifting a bottle of water on the other side of the road. The question that comes to mind is: why?
I can't say I know the answer, but it looks to me like the forbidden fruit was basically the illegal act, rather than the pics he got.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What are you talking about? Women using Mac are usually the hot and artsy/designer ones.
The ones using Windows are the fat moms, and the ones using Linux are almost certainly the fat geeks.
On a semi-serious note what's up with attractive equaling super skinny? I like my women to actually look like women and not kids.
The conventional explanation is that this is the standard in the fashion and advertising industries, and it's well known that those are dominated by gay men, who of course prefer women who look like boys. ;-)
On a more serious note, if you look at any of the "men's" magazines -- Playboy, Hustler, etc. -- you'll see that their standard of female beauty is pretty much the average-size woman, neither skinny nor fat. They don't even select for especially large breasts, just for "full" breasts.
And we can also go into the "scientific trivia" aspect: A number of studies have found that the most attractive image of either sex is very close to the average (in whatever society is polled). The most interesting is the surveys done by presenting a lot of photos of real people, mixed with computer-generated "average" images derived from N of the real-people photos, for varying values of N. The winners have been generally the images where N is large, i.e., a true "average" person among the set of photos.
So if you reject both skinny and fat women, and prefer an average-looking woman, you're just a normal guy. Similarly for women's choices of attractive men.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.